Buongiorno Orsoni!

The long awaited trip to Venice is about to start tomorrow. On Sunday morning Lynn, Holly and I depart for our master mosaic class at Orsoni’s in the Cannaregio district of Venice. We will be joined later in the day by Kathy and Polli. We will have a whole week of working (and playing) with smalti tiles. Smalti tile, sometimes referred to as Byzantine glass mosaic tile, are very special opaque glass tiles. According to Wikipedia: Smalti is made by mixing molten glass with metal oxides for color; the result is a cloudy mixture that is poured into flat slabs that are cooled and cut into individual pieces. The smalti mixture can also be topped with gold leaf, which makes beautiful and precious gold tiles! One of the best parts about this class, Orsoni’s is giving us access to what I call their candy store. The candy store has just about every colour imaginable and is a delight to visit!

Smalti is a very expensive tile to buy here in England and I found very hard to use. I hope to learn how to cut smalti efficiently with the hammer and hardy but I am still packing my hand cutters! I did one smalti mirror for our Florida house and Lynn made a fantastic aquarium project in smalti last year. For weeks now in preparation for this master class we have all been thinking about, planning and drawing our intended projects. What stress! Loretta was here yesterday afternoon to help Lynn finalize her project. I wish she was going with us! Thank god for art teachers! Last week, thanks to Holly I got my project of a London landscape onto paper. I hope it turns molte bene!